I seem to be losing things on a regular basis.  And not just my mind.  I keep leaving things at restaurants, at the gym.  Most of the time I am able to retrieve the lost article.  A scarf, a sweatshirt.  Other things are just gone.  I lost my Fitbit somewhere in Washington DC last week.  I will never see it again.  I miss the alarms on the Fitbit to take my meds.  And now I sometimes forget to take those too.

But the latest mishap occurred at the spa at my gym.   My back was bothering me after the long flight home, so I scheduled a massage.  It was wonderful.  I had put my rings and watch in the pocket of the spa robe and reminded myself to take them out when I got dressed later.  I was so relaxed after the massage, that I put on my  watch and then forgot about the rest.  I returned the robe to the spa and went home.  Later that evening I realized that I wasn’t wearing my necklace (also in the pocket of the robe)  I called the gym early the next morning and went later on a search mission, checking the pockets of the robes that had come back from the laundry.  No luck.  No, I am not the only one that this has happened to.  They said that most of the time, things show up within a couple of days.  But so far, nothing.

It is beginning to seem like I need a checklist to make sure that I have all of my belongings when I leave any place.  This was never a problem before.  At least not this frequently.  Is it the Parkinson’s?  Aging?  Actually, this reminds me of a story my friend and fellow Parkie,  Dr. Maria de Leon wrote about in her book Parkinson’s Diva.  Her story occurs after a massage too.

After a massage, she got dressed quickly and then  “As I was walking towards the Ladies Room, I felt a chill, which I promptly ignored;  after all it was winter and extremely cold outside.  As I passed through the corridor, I noticed all eyes were on me, which I ignored and continued to the bathroom.  I did wonder briefly why everyone seemed so fascinated by me today.  Upon entering the bathroom, I realized the reason.  I had forgotten to put on my blouse!  I was parading about wearing only my lacy red bran and leather jacket, which happened to be wide open.”

Maybe the moral of this story is that we should either forget the massage or find that we leave our brain on the massage table and suffer the consequences.  Now where did I put my keys??????